Beyond: Two Souls

Quantic Dream snagged actress Ellen Page for its new PS3 game, Beyond: Two Souls, and premiered a trailer during Sony's E3 press conference to show off her high-profile, performance-captured video game debut. Naturally, the video Quantic chose featured Page's character sitting absolutely still, not talking and looking like Sinead O'Connor's reaction gif to Two Girls One Cup.

The demo Quantic Dream mastermind David Cage showed the press the following day went a long way to demonstrate Page's proficiency in a video game world, though it still didn't highlight any deep dialogue or empathetic scenes.

Executive Producer Guillaume de Fondaumière played a half-hour action sequence filled with train-top rain battles, stealing motorcycles from cops and exploding helicopters -- but Beyond is much more than a single demo can contain.

"There is also emotion," Cage said. "We just showed you one walkthrough. But you could have played it in many different ways. In the entire scene, there are scenes inside the scenes that we didn't show you."

Sceneception.

Beyond: Two Souls tells the tale of Jodie Holmes, a young woman who has been haunted by an invisible, powerful presence her entire life. She calls it "Aiden" and it can interact with the physical world, follow orders and communicate with Jodie, and it's also the second playable character in Beyond.

The demo opened at night, with Jodie curled up in a ratty hoodie riding a train. Cage informed us that she was a fugitive, though he wouldn't specify why; we assume it has something to do with the monstrously destructive entity tethered to her body.

Fondaumière played the whole demo while Cage commentated as he saw fit, usually to point out just how directly Fondaumière was controlling the characters. Quantic is widely recognized for its interactive narrative titles, most notably with its previous PS3 release, Heavy Rain, and Cage was eager to mention the rich action sequences and the amount of control players will have over Jodie and Aiden's every move, even when it appeared they were being controlled via cutscene or pre-determined paths.

Fondaumière used the Sixaxis functionality to first take control of Aiden, who was distinguishable on-screen through the thread that linked him back to Jodie. Otherwise, from a first-invisible-person perspective, Aiden ran amok in the train cabin, disturbing other passengers by knocking over their water bottles and generally making the air around them frigid.

Along with the Sixaxis control, Cage said he is "in the process of thinking about" Move integration as well.
Beyond: Two Souls (E3 2012)


Aiden was bored, Cage said. When he bumped into Jodie she woke from a light sleep to grumble in frustration at him, as if he were an annoying little brother. She hadn't slept in three days, she whined, pulling the hood back over her head (which, it should be noted, had chin-length hair on it).

The train made an unexpected stop at a woodland security checkpoint, where a police troop was on the hunt for "a girl." The officers had an air of lazy indifference about them, but as they boarded the train in the search for Jodie, they soon proved to be the most tenacious group of law enforcers, ever. Just, ever.

Aiden helped Jodie escape the train through the ceiling's bathroom hatch, and the officers, having recognized and chased her through a few cabins, followed her to the roof of the train, which was traveling at full speed through a torrent of rain. Fondaumière had, by this point, taken control of Jodie, who punched, kicked and slid her way out of the clutches of every police officer she encountered on top of the speeding train in the rain.

Eventually Aiden created a force field around Jodie so she could leap safely into the surrounding forest, leaving the cops stranded, wet and probably confused on top of a moving train.

Cage wasn't kidding when he said "the story required more action."

Beyond used a familiar control scheme, with on-screen prompts to push left, tap x and shake the controller appearing in the familiar, modern, white Heavy Rain style.

Jodie herself looks -- spoilers -- like Ellen Page. Quantic Dream used performance capture technology to place Page in the game as a direct image of Jodie. Performance capture differs from the standard motion capture system in that it removes the split-take: With motion capture, the face and voice is filmed and recorded first, and the actions are filmed second to sync up with the audio. Performance capture gets all this in one go, recording full-body and -head movements as actors speak their lines in real-time.

As a result, Jodie moves in limp, life-like motions and her face, in close-up shots, has enough fleshy detail to show every single pore dotting her cheeks and nose. Her mouth looked stiff still, but again, this demo didn't exactly focus on grand speech-making. Jodie did say "fuck" quite a few times, though.


The cops in the demo continued their persistence through a damp, dark forest where Jodie fought off a pack of police dogs and scaled a slippery, sheer rock face. The animals reacted to Aiden's presence with a wary growl and the on-screen cues fit themselves to the environment in a few instances, including during Jodie's risky climb.

Aiden has more talents than simply knocking beverages from arm rests -- he can possess people who have orange auras, causing their eyes to turn milky white and placing them in the direct control of the player. Fondaumière used this ability to have one cop create a handy distraction. Then he used it to murder an entire SWAT team in horrifying and gruesome ways.

The demo ended where the public trailer did, on a burning, destroyed street with Jodie standing over a SWAT commander and warning him that next time, she'd kill everyone. Thing is, we got to see what happened right before she made that threat, and honestly, it looked like she did kill everyone.

Cage explained that there are multiple paths to follow in each scenario and that the game is not linear: "This is a sandbox," he said, just before he used Aiden to possess a sniper and shoot down three SWAT officers as they stood in position around Jodie, who was injured and crouched behind a car.

Aiden then proceeded to possess more SWAT officers, flip over cars and make a gas station burst into flames, coating a handful of people in liquid fire and sending them writhing on the ground in pain. Aiden destroyed an entire watchtower in two clicks and he and Jodie were eventually able to escape.

Buried within the scenes of mass murder is a deep coming-of-age story, Cage promised, but his focus on proving Quantic Dream can do action led him to choose this particular scenario as a demo and in the E3 announcement trailer.

Page plays Jodie through 15 years of her life, from an angsty teenager to a vibrant young woman, all with an invisible violent killer attached to her very being. Beyond addresses mourning, loss and the "other side" as Cage perceives it, created because he was dissatisfied with the explanations most religions had to offer.

"The game is really about growing, it's about evolving, about accepting who you are, even when you're different," Cage said. "It's also about death. You're going to get very torn apart when you're tied to something living between our world and the other side.

"It's about death, it's about separation, it's about mourning. All the things that you usually don't find in video games," Cage said.

Tomb Raider 2013 drawing fire for 'attempted rape' scene

Crystal Dynamics head Darrell Gallagher and game producer Ron Rosenberg expressed their views on reactions to the violent Tomb Raider trailer shown at E3.

In one part of the video, Lara appears to be fending off a would-be raper, kneeing him in the groin and struggling to shoot him when he pins her to the ground.





“To actually see what she goes through, to become hardened, to become this tomb raider than we know and love, or at least a new version of it," Gallagher told the Penny Arcade Report. "A big part of that journey is seeing some of the hits she’s taken along the way and why she had to get that inner strength and the inner core to become the woman that we all know. There is that sense of seeing it and being explicit about that. It’s part of the narrative.”

Rosenberg explained that the emphasis on Lara's suffering was intentional — and that their research into survivors of extreme situations revealed a common mantra: keep moving.

“You see that in the beginning of the game, where we begin to build her up and give her confidence to cross the ledge, cross the plane, she forages for food and she’s feeling really successful," Rosenberg said. "Then towards the end we start to really hit her, and to break her down. Her best friend is kidnapped, she’s taken hostage, she’s almost raped, we put her in this position where we turned her into a cornered animal.”

Tomb Raider, scheduled for release on March 5 of next year, is better considered as a reboot than a prequel. The Lara Croft that we've seen before is not necessarily the one we'll know by the end of the new game.

“They share many traits so you can recognize the iconography, it’s the same character, but it’s a more modern version," said Gallagher. "It doesn’t necessarily lead directly into Tomb Raider 1, with hot pants and a braid.”

"The ability to see her as a human is even more enticing to me than the more sexualized version of yesteryear," he said. "She literally goes from zero to hero... we're sort of building her up and just when she gets confident, we break her down again."

It's some dark material, the type of content you might not expect from an action-adventure game like Tomb Raider. But Rosenberg isn't worried about alarming people too much. He says players will see right away that this is a darker, "more mature" version of Lara's story. He compared it to the origin story of a comic book like Spider-Man or Batman, saying he thinks it "has that feel to it."

"We're not trying to be over the top, shock people for shock's sake," he said. "We're trying to tell a great origin story."

GamePro Magazine came under fire last November for a cryptic tweet that read:
What does rape have to do with the #TombRaider reboot? Buy the 1st GamePro Quarterly & solve the mystery on page 49.

Resident Evil 6

production standpoint, this atmospheric third-person shooter (this is no survival horror game, certainly) hits a number of high notes, weaving multiple stories into a single narrative that you untangle from different perspectives. It's unfortunate that actually interacting with Resident Evil 6 is an excruciating chore. This is a wannabe action film that resents your interference, and punishes you by forcing one horrible quick-time event after another upon you.


Ace Combat, Resident Evil edition.
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That Resident Evil 6 wants to be a movie is evident in almost every facet of its gameplay. Plenty of games dramatize their events through extended cutscenes, Metal Gear Solid being an oft-cited example of a series known for long-winded cinematics. Having many cutscenes isn't a problem in and of itself; constantly interrupting the flow of gameplay, on the other hand, is Resident Evil 6's disappointing calling card.

In a typical five-minute stretch, you might watch a cutscene, walk for five seconds, trigger another cutscene, open a door, perform a quick-time event, view another cutscene, shoot some mutated freaks, and then do nothing while you wait for your co-op partner to finish some task or another before you can continue on. All through that stretch, the camera changes position countless times, you're forced to walk really slowly for a while, and an almost-unavoidable scripted "gotcha" moment gifts you with a game-over screen ("You Are Dead"), forcing you to replay the sequence while wondering what you could have done to prevent it.

These problems infiltrate all four of Resident Evil 6's campaigns, though each campaign shifts its focus and tone--and all but Ada Wong's puzzle-driven campaign (unlocked when you have finished the other three) feature cooperative play. In Leon Kennedy's campaign, you play as either Leon or newcomer Helena Harper, while your cohort is left to the care of another player, or of the AI. Leon's campaign is the most traditional, recalling the fourth and fifth chapters of the series by way of mysterious locations like an eerie graveyard and creep-strewn city streets. In a campaign that looks to military shooters for inspiration, Chris Redfield joins fellow BSAA operative Piers Nivens in war-torn streets to shoot up infected foes and larger-than-life bosses. Jake Muller and Sherry Birkin's campaign is focused more on scripted events than the others and lacks the thematic cohesion of the other three (unless you count an overload of contextual button prompts as a theme). A short prelude introduces you to the basic mechanics, which are mostly identical across the campaigns. It also functions as a warning of what's to come.

Jiggle the stick as fast as you can if you wish to avoid a kiss from Aunt Mabel.
Right off the bat, you notice what is to be a common theme in Resident Evil 6: quick-time events are prominent to the point of distraction. Keep your thumbs limber and your trigger fingers ready, for you will be hammering buttons and jiggling thumbsticks ad nauseam. Wiggle that stick to get the monster off you! Furiously tap that button to crawl faster! Making matters worse is that the quick-time events aren't even that well implemented. Some of them require superhuman wiggling speeds; others, like those that require alternating trigger presses, don't have a clear rhythm. And succeeding means triggering a sonic zing and a bright circular eruption that distract you from the dramatic animations.

Even ignoring quick-time events, button prompts are the rule rather than the exception. Capcom drops in so many set piece moments that they lose their luster. Good set pieces--that is, large scale events with major visual punch and limited interactivity--punctuate gameplay, rather than replace it. Here, they constantly disrupt the gameplay, and a few types of set pieces emerge as clear developer favorites. One such type is the "run toward the camera" bit, in which you hold a button to sprint toward the camera, and press buttons to leap over obstacles or slide under them. It takes a special talent to make such sequences work, but no such talent is demonstrated here; the camera constantly changes position, which destroys the flow of both the controls and the visuals.

That big boss doesn't look so imposing from a distance.
Resident Evil 6 is constantly (and annoyingly) playing with camera angles, even outside of the running sections. The worst moments are those that yank control from you and force you to stare at a growling behemoth's dramatic entrance, or a helicopter's flyover, even when you're in the middle of a quick-time event, or engaged in a shoot-out. Smart games either have you hold a button if you want to witness a major incident, or simply allow the incident to happen. Resident Evil 6 is not a smart game. It doesn't care what you're doing: that monster is big, and the game forces the bigness upon you. (And when the sequence is done, the camera may not be in the position in which it started.) Such occurrences are, every time, detrimental to gameplay, and it's shocking how many of them there are.

Not that your co-op partner is usually harmful to the experience. If you play on your own, the AI does a great job of knowing what to do and where to go. The game does have a few good co-op ideas up its sleeve, such as a sequence in which one player swims from the snapping jaws of a finned fiend, and the other must shoot it. But the good ideas are too often let down by troublesome execution: in that same sequence, your mission objective might contradict what the game actually needs you to do. Other times, one player waits around with nothing to do, while the other slashes up bio-organic weapons (that is, B.O.W.s) and finally opens a door or lowers a ladder. Most cooperative actions simply involve opening a door together. And boy is there a lot of door opening in Resident Evil 6.

In between the frequent set pieces, the quick-time events, and the cooperative door kickings, there is some mutant killing. The core mechanics are similar to those in other third-person shooters, but with the idiosyncrasies that defined Resident Evils 4 and 5. The camera stays close behind your back, movements like leaping and crouching are contextual rather than freely available, and the pace is deliberate. Shooting grotesqueries often results in new mutations: bulbous growths sprout from the necks of advancing fiends, and disgusting diminutive creatures spawn from their hosts and skitter along the floor. You can also kick and pummel your foes, though whether you prefer to keep your distance or get right in there, the lumbering lunatics react properly, knocking over other infected as they lurch from the power of your shotgun blasts. If you find the deliberate action appealing, you can devote some time to the returning Mercenaries mode, in which you and a buddy (or you alone) off as many enemies as you can before the clock ticks down to zero.


It's quiet--too quiet. Oh wait; no it's not.
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It's unfortunate that Resident Evil 6's campaigns want so desperately to take you out of the action. A single bullet from a sniper can knock you to the ground; you can either get to your feet and reposition yourself, or just shoot while you're down until the right time to rise presents itself. In Jake's campaign, getting knocked down on a particularly icy slope means sliding all the way to the bottom, and having to make the climb again. As is typical for Capcom action games, long animations need to finish before you regain control--and that kind of approach could have worked fine in a game that sticks closely to the Resident Evil 4 template.

But Resident Evil 6 is focused less on building tension than any previous game in the main series, and the over-deliberate mechanics don't always mesh well with the action-game sensibilities and highly linear levels. The claustrophobic behind-the-back camera in cramped hallways, the knockback loops, the cumbersome method of combining herbs and healing yourself--these facets once worked well to help instill a sense of terror and make you consider every action and every step. In Resident Evil 6, a game that mostly leaves its survival horror roots behind, the same attributes hinder your enjoyment.

 
Another set piece event? You don't say!
That isn't to say that Resident Evil 6 is hard. On medium difficulty, you can often run right past the baddies, or just spam a trigger and punch them to death. You needn't worry about ammo all that often; the only time you're likely to run out is when you face a bullet-sponge boss and there's no more ammo to be had in the battle arena. But while you won't often die due to the level of challenge (unless you crank up the difficulty, of course), you might not be able to escape a few of the game's "gotcha" deaths. With little warning, a vehicle might crash through a barricade, and if you happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, you're dead. When an avalanche occurs, if you don't know to expect it, you might not have enough room to veer your snowmobile away. (This is one of several mediocre vehicular segments.) That's not challenging: that's cheap, and it's bad game design.

While Resident Evil 6 is no survival horror game, it does have a few memorably tense moments. In Leon's campaign, flashes of lightning in a dark cemetery might have you jumping once or twice, and the appearance of Resident Evil's famous zombie dogs will have you reliving the franchise's good old days. The visit to an old cathedral that follows is similarly evocative, considering its roots in the series' past. Where the game most impresses is in its production values, particularly in sound and narrative. Each campaign tells a different story--but those four stories overlap in interesting ways before they diverge again. You need to play the unlockable campaign to make sense of every mystery, but this is a great way to learn tall tales of the latest global threat.


Leon recovers from a particularly exhausting struggle with the left analog stick.
Grand voice acting gives the melodramatic story plenty of weight. The talented cast makes every sullen regret, every cry for help, and every enthusiastic encouragement ring true, even in the midst of the most fantastical of events. The gross, squishy sound effects are so potent that you might try to wipe imaginary goo from your clothes. The cutscenes deserve special mention. A slow-motion shot of a bus's interior, a character's shocking fall from a great height, and a tense standoff between allies are but a few examples of the excellent cinematics that drive the story onward.

But how far can cinematics get you when the gameplay sandwiched between them is so poorly paced, so utterly misconceived, so reliant on stick wriggles and button tapping? There's a place for contextual prompts and cinematic storytelling in video games, but Resident Evil 6 is a mishmash of elements put together without any sense of care or direction. Series faithful might stumble through for the sake of story, and perhaps to appreciate those few moments that recall when Resident Evil was at its peak glory. But this long, poor sequel is the ultimate test of patience for even the most dedicated.

Injustice: Gods Among Us

NetherRealm Studios is releasing their DC-based fighter in the spring, and we expect a steady stream of character reveals as the months roll on. As we've been doing with Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale, we'll be updating this story as NetherRealm and WB pull the curtain back. Keep an eye on this story to keep up to date on the latest reveals in the Mortal Kombat developer's upcoming title.



NEW - DeathStroke: A trailer showing off DeathStroke's gunplay and sword fighting skills has shown up online.

Green Lantern: No details yet. Creator Ed Boon confirmed via Twitter that Green Lantern is in the game after the box art appeared online.

Joker: No details yet. Creator Ed Boon confirmed via Twitter that Joker is in the game after the box art appeared online.

Green Arrow: Oliver Queen brings his bow skills to the fight. He comes packed with a number of different arrow types to annoy your opponents from afar.

Batman: It wouldn't be a DC fighter without the Caped Crusader, and he's here in full force. He features the typical assortment of gadget-based projectiles and attacks, and his Batcave stage features plenty of environmental hazards.

Harley Quinn: Joker's main squeeze has some gadgets of her own, including a pistol, a massive hammer, booby-trapped gift packages, and a deadly birthday cake.

Superman: The Man of Steel can attack with his iconic assortment of powers, but he can also knock an enemy into orbit (and back) with his ridiculously over-the-top super move.



Wonder Woman: Most fighters in Injustice fight from only one stance, but Wonder Woman can switch between her lasso and her sword/shield combo. Her moveset will change significantly depending on which stance you're currently in.

Catwoman: Batman's on-again, off-again love interest can attack with her whip and bladed claws, and looks to be one of the quickest characters in the game based on her debut trailer

Flash: This superhero features one of the more useful abilities in the game, as he can essentially slow down time. With his enemies moving in slow motion, it's far easier to get in a flurry of attacks. Oh yeah, and he can sprint around the world to build up a massive punch to the face.

Solomon Grundy: This unfortunate Gotham resident has a particularly brutal super move. He pulls cleavers out of his back, slices his opponent with them, and then pulls a tombstone out of his own chest. Of course, he proceeds to crack it over his victim's skull.



Nightwing: Robin's alter-ego is one of the more agile fighters in the game, and can combine his dual sticks into a large staff. He also comes equipped with bladed projectiles that can be tossed from the ground or air.

Cyborg: This half-robotic fighter is deadly from any range with his laser-guided missile attack, and can pull out a massive cannon that emits a devastating laser blast.

God of War: Ascension

Not counting a brief foray into mobile, God of War: Ascension will be the sixth game in the series’ short seven-year lifespan. In that time, Kratos has fought some of the most intense battles in videogames, while also taking gory disemboweling and delimbing to a new level of detail. At a press event in New York I spoke with David Hewitt, game design manager for Sony Santa Monica, about the game’s hallmark violence, the difficulty of making sequels, and whether game mechanics can be used primarily for emotional reasons.

IGN: There was a lot of criticism about violence in big games at E3 this year, and God of War: Ascension was frequently mentioned. Do you have any thoughts about that criticism?

“

He was tricked into killing his wife and family. He’s literally covered in their ashes during every moment.

David Hewitt: The core of the God of War series is Greek mythology, and that’s blood and guts, vengeful gods, horrific things being enacted on mortals. What we’re doing is injecting a character into that and telling a story of revenge. Kratos has been through this before. He was tricked into killing his wife and family. He’s literally covered in their ashes during every moment. His motivation is violent, bloody revenge, and the milieu of mythology puts us in this distant, exaggerated world. We do revel in it somewhat but the violence is there to show Kratos dealing with his demons and enacting that revenge in a very physical, hands-on way.

IGN: I wonder if a part of it was that many of those games were using violence in an increasingly familiar way, and not necessarily that this year was so much more violent than any other year. People are becoming familiar with that level of gore and exaggeration and the unnerving effect of it has worn off.

David Hewitt:  I think that if all we had was the affect of showing violence in a game then we’d be in big trouble. It’s the mechanics of the game that matter. The presentation plays a big part in drawing people in initially. I think if the context is a wartime setting or something a little more modern than our game it has a different impact. Your reaction to that might be a bit more ambiguous. But we’re far removed from what your day-to-day experience is when we’re in this vastly different and weird mythological world.

The series has wanted to keep upping itself in presentation and making sure we have those moments where people kind of recoil a bit—genuinely uncomfortable moments that are part of the feel of this franchise. We’ve stuck by those, but the game’s not driven by those.

What we’re pushing for is mechanical innovation, making the combat rewarding, having every button press feel magnified with a lot of feedback. Some of that comes from these gory outcomes, but what we’re looking to do is provide that extra level of depth and complexity, to give the player more tools to use -- new weapons and sub-weapons, the new tether mechanics and so on.

IGN: Do you have an internal line of what kind of violence you won’t show in the game? Is there a line that you wouldn’t cross with Kratos?

David Hewitt: We do. In fact the team has a set of rules that define those sorts of things very clearly. Where it shows itself is how the combat designers and animators have designed Kratos’ moves. He’s always leaning forward, he’s always moving forward. He’s seeking revenge and he’s after his ultimate objective and he will tear through enemies -- rip them in half -- as quickly as he can. But there’s not a lot of flourishes, there’s not any kind of enjoying the moment. There’s nothing about this that he’s enjoying.

There are some things we’ve pulled back from. I think where this has been an issue is with violence against women -- the team’s pulled back from some of that and assessed that a little more carefully. There are certain things that carry has a different kind of resonance that we don’t want to get into. This isn’t about statement-making in that regard. It’s about fleshing out this character.

IGN: When I first heard Ascension would be a prequel to all the other God of War games I was excited that it might be a chance to rebuild the game around a totally new idea -- to have Kratos be a mortal and not supernaturally powerful and not be obsessed with revenge. Is it constraining to always have to go back to the same general set of mechanics and that revenge-driven tone?

“

There are some things we’ve pulled back from. I think where this has been an issue is with violence against women...

David Hewitt: The game isn’t a reboot; it’s a continuation of the series. We’ve gone back to an earlier point of the story. There are a handful of things that are pillars of this franchise. They want to see ridiculous, epic, over-the-top moments, huge bosses, fluid combat, lots of options for combos, climbing, maneuvering around the environment, puzzle solving. Those are baseline expectations for the series that we need to build on regardless of whether we’re going back in the timeline.

Kratos is really struggling with his demons here, he’ll go through some seriously heavy events. He gets beaten up over the course of the story, he’s more vulnerable with some of the enemies than he was in the past. His movements have changed too. In the previous game he would just stab his blades into walls to climb around and in this one he’s more grabbing on with his hands and using footholds. That’s been a really nice refinement. In combat he’s got the ability to pick up other weapons, he can grab a sword or a spear -- or disarm weapons. So we’ve tried to expand on the toolset. We want to build on those things, but in a way that makes sense for a real human individual.

The Elder Scrolls Online

Zenimax Online faces the difficult task of appeasing several different sets of expectations from gamers who come from different games and genres. Read on for how The Elder Scrolls Online aims to appeal to several different fanbases.



The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Seeing more of the world. Haven’t you ever been curious what the Argonian homeland looks like, or what riding through Daggerfall in a game with a modern graphics engine would look like? ESO includes sections of every province in Tamriel, so you can explore many of the locations you’ve only read about in books until now.
Lore. The Elder Scrolls franchise has an enormous body of backstory, and ESO is blowing it out even further. Zenimax Online is working hand-in-hand with the loremasters at Bethesda Game Studios to flesh out Tamriel’s Second Era, so lore nuts should have plenty to digest.
Finding adventure wherever you wander. Isn’t that what Elder Scrolls is all about? The Mage Guild’s gameplay revolves around finding ancient texts and bits of lore and runs throughout the entire game. Unmarked dungeons, ruins, caves, and other adventure-filled areas dot the landscape, so wandering through the Black Marsh isn’t a matter of grinding giant bugs for experience as it is a hunt for lost artifacts of ancient Argonian civilization, even though no NPC has given you a specific task to do so.
Touchstones. Daedric princes, birthsigns, guilds, and many more elements that players strongly associate with the franchise are all integral parts of the game. Some things, like player housing, aren’t making the transition to an MMO because of the constraints inherent to an online game, but Zenimax Online is including everything that makes sense.


World of Warcraft

Working with other players. While WoW’s world design and game rules expect you to fly solo outside of designated elite quests and group dungeons, Zenimax Online is going out of its way to make sure helping someone else out always benefits everyone. For instance, there’s no “tagging” and so helping a random stranger kill a monster results in both of you getting full credit.
That old BRD feeling. Blackrock Depths is often mentioned as a favorite dungeon of old-school WoW players for the sense of exploring a huge, hostile city instead of fighting through a series of corridors. ESO’s public dungeons, unless Zenimax Online badly botches the design, should recreate some of what made BRD special...but hopefully without the painful process of finding a group that wants to accomplish the same subset of goals that you’re looking to do.
Non-instanced PvP warfare. Remember the good old days of open warfare in the Hillsbrad Foothills as huge mobs of players fought over Tarren Mill and Southshore? Expand that to the entire province of Cyrodiil. Take out the server-crashing lag, since the engine can handle up to 200 players onscreen and Zenimax Online has still-under-wraps plans to divert excess population. Forget about lowbie ganking, since everyone’s stats are automatically boosted to level-cap status in Cyrodiil. Oh, and there are things to fight over besides murdering helpless questgivers. Like, for instance, keeps whose walls you can bash down with trebuchets.
Familiar but innovative combat. ESO has lock-on targeting and a hotbar, but it shakes up quite a bit within that framework. Limiting the number of available skills to a handful (currently six, but that number could change) but making each ability awesome sounds great. The addition of stamina for blocking, sprinting, interrupting, and disable-breaking should dramatically increase the moment-to-moment depth of combat.


Star Wars: The Old Republic

More fully voiced story. Does anyone want to go back to walls of text after Bioware showed the world how it’s done with Star Wars’ dialogue and story? No, no we do not. And we won’t have to in order to play ESO with its full voice acting.
Working with other players (see WoW entry, above). Outside of flashpoints, cooperating with other players in SW:TOR is extremely limited in scope. That hopefully won’t be the case in ESO.
Dynamic, large-group combat. SW:TOR did a great job of throwing different types of encounters at players even in its solo content, and ESO is following suit. The baseline solo encounter design has players taking on three enemies at a time, and they work together to bring you down by combining skills like lighting oil patches on fire.


Rift

Public content. Rifts are amazing, and Zenimax Online hopes to recreate the sense of working together with random strangers with the Fighters Guild content (destroying Molag Bal’s randomly appearing dark anchors) as well as public dungeons.
Polish and technical competence. Remember when Rift came out, and we were all blown away at how a team of veteran developers with a whole lot of money behind them could put out an MMO that was solid at launch? Well, ESO has a similar situation – game director Matt Firor was heavily involved with Dark Age of Camelot, creative director Paul Sage worked on Ultima Online among others, and team members at Zenimax Online across all disciplines can boast similar credentials. Anything less than a Rift-like level of stability and polish at launch will be a huge disappointment for ESO.
These are just a few elements of The Elder Scrolls Online that should appeal to the fanbases of various games. Fans of the franchise have a lot of questions yet to be answered, like how the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood will work in an MMO setting and how Zenimax Online is going to approximate the rich interactions with objects in the world that we’ve gotten used to since Morrowind. Nonetheless, writing off ESO as “just another MMO” or “WoW with daedra” is doing this ambitious project a grave disservice. Click the banner below to go to the hub, where you can see Firor and Sage explain their philosophies in video interviews, see screenshots, and get more details on the game as we roll them out all month.

SimCity™

Coming March 5 to PC!

For the first time, SimCity will feature Multi-city play where you can go solo, invite friends or join with neighbors to build multiple cities in your region! Collaborate or compete with friends to grow the fastest population, create the most jobs, educate the most Sims and much more! Access SimCity World to connect to global markets and participate in regional challenges!Build the city of your dreams and watch as the choices you make shape your city and change the lives of the Sims within it. Every decision, big or small, right or wrong, has real consequences for your Sims. Invest in heavy industry and your economy will soar—but at the expense of your Sims’ health as pollution spreads. Implement green technology and improve your Sims’ lives but risk higher taxes and unemployment. In SimCity, you’re the Mayor and how you run your city is entirely up to you!

Pre-order for the exclusive SimCity Heroes and Villains set!

The last of Us

he Last of Us is an upcoming third-person survival/action video game developed by Naughty Dog centered around a modern plague decimating mankind. Nature encroaches upon civilization, forcing remaining survivors to kill for food, weapons, and whatever they can find. Joel, a ruthless survivor, and Ellie, a brave young teenage girl who is wise beyond her years, must work together to survive their westward journey across what remains of the United States. The game will be "more realistic and cinematic" than other games Naughty Dog has developed and will be released on May 7th, 2013Contents

DevelopmentEdit

According to USA Today, back in 2008, Neil Druckmann had an idea for a graphic novel about a father-daughter zombie tale. He and game director Bruce Straley saw the cordyceps fungus segment from the BBC/Discovery channel series Planet Earth, in which then turned into a major source of inspiration for The Last of Us's primary plot. Both were working on Uncharted 2 at the time. After the development of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves finished, some team members of Naughty Dog moved on to The Last of Us while the others moved on to start on Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception. The game has been in development for over two years.

AnnouncementEdit
Before the Video Game Awards, Sony showed two teaser trailers: one from the BBC/Discovery Documentary Planet Earth, displaying an ant dying from a deadly fungus, and the other one showing past events of protests, riots, and other glimpses of chaos while a man narrates, talking about how all of the mundane things in life he took for granted were now gone, suggesting that the game was going to be post-apocalyptic.

VGA 2011Edit
The game was officially unveiled at the 2011 Spike Video Game Awards with a new, in-engine trailer. The opening scene is of lush greenery displayed outside of an open window as its curtains catch a light breeze entering a room. The scene then pans out further into the room, where a body is lying lifelessly on a bed, bleeding out onto the floor. A teenage girl can be seen running across the horrific display, rummaging through the rest of the ruined building for supplies. After hearing a conflict upstairs, she investigates to find two men fighting one another. After one of the men is killed, the other is found to be the girl's associate, Joel. He then tells her to investigate the body for anything of use, to which she then finds some ammunition. Before she can finish collecting them though, several human-like creatures invade the building and the girl's name is discovered to be Ellie, as her middle-aged acquaintance calls her name and takes her by the hand as they hide behind a wall for cover; however, one of them can be heard coming close to their position, and, after drawing his pistol, the man is attacked by one of them at arm's length. While he is struggling with the creature, Ellie stabs it in the back repeatedly with her switchblade, giving the man the opportunity to shoot the creature in the head, killing it. The two then hastily leave the building, where it is shown that the entire city is in a dilapidated state, with entire city blocks covered in vegetation.
PlayStation BlogEdit

Shortly after the unveiling, Naughty Dog co-president Evan Wells posted this on the PlayStation Blog:
"The Last of Us is a genre-defining experience that blends survival and action elements to tell a character driven tale about a modern plague decimating mankind. Nature encroaches upon civilization, forcing remaining survivors to kill for food, weapons and whatever they can find. Joel, a ruthless survivor, and Ellie, a brave young teenage girl who is wise beyond her years, must work together to survive their journey across what remains of the United States.
The announcement also confirmed that the new project is being headed by studio game director Bruce Straley and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves director Neil Druckmann.
Pre-ReleaseEdit

The following media has been revealed during the time after announcement and before release:
Truck Ambush Cutscene Preview - Joel and Ellie drive around Pittsburgh and encounter a trap that results in the two being ambushed by several vicious survivors.

E3 Gameplay Demo - A seven minute demo of the first gameplay footage of The Last of Us. Joel and Ellie enter a hotel en route to a bridge on the outskirts of Pittsburgh only to encounter ruthless hunters.
Bill's Safe House Cinematic - Shown at Comic-Con 2012, this cutscene preview involves Joel and Ellie fleeing to the safe house of a somewhat friendly survivor named Bill.

PAX Gameplay Demo - An extended version of the previous, publicly shown demo at E3, about 16 full minutes in length and revealing several new features and character interaction that weren't present in the original.

VGA 2012 Story Teaser Trailer - A 30 second long teaser in which Joel brandishes a bloody machete to a hunter chained to a radiator saying "We don't have to do this, you know that right?"

VGA 2012 Story Trailer - A trailer featuring various dialogues between many different characters that further explain the game's storyline. It was shown at VGA 2012, one year after the announcement trailer's first showing.

PlotEdit

The Last of Us begins in a Boston quarantine zone twenty years after the initial plague, where 14-year-old orphan Ellie lives in a boarding house. Joel, in his forties at the time, is recruited to sneak her out for an unknown reason. Evidently, things take a turn for the worse, and the military apparently finds out about their escape and begins pursuit. While Joel normally would have left Ellie and fled for his life, he had promised a dying friend to take care of her, and after a nearby safe haven fails to work out, their trek west across the United States to escape the law enforcement begins to unfold. Along the way, the duo must overcome countless hostiles, ranging from infected enemies to hunters and other enemy survivors. The game takes place over the course of one year.[citation needed]
LocationsEdit
Boston
Pittsburgh
GameplayEdit
The gameplay will be "less linear" than the Uncharted series, even though it will not be open-world. Instead "the exploration will be more important and will have enough weight in the gameplay."[5] As of February 4th, it has been revealed that some events pertaining to The Last of Us will take place in Boston, Massachusetts, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

CombatEdit
The combat in the The Last of Us will be very realistic and strategical. Resources are limited and the lethality of weapons is very high, as in reality. You can't only hide behind cover and wait for your health to regenerate like in Uncharted; rather, "health packs" must be applied to repair damage to Joel or Ellie's health. There will be both guns and melee combat, as well as breakable weapons such as planks and bricks. Part of the gameplay will revolve around scavenging for new items.
Artificial IntelligenceEdit

Naughty Dog has also stressed the amount of realism and believability that they seek to heavily attribute to the game's AI, in which they will show emotion and vulnerability by getting angry when a friend dies, warning each other of danger, and becoming frightened when they've lost the upper hand; this structured AI system is a dynamic, adaptable blueprint also known/referred to as the "Balance of Power", in which the overall scenario and the advantages that come with it changes depending on which opposing group can prove to be the stronger, better-equipped one. Throughout their journey, Joel and Ellie will fight both different factions of humans/survivors and infected enemies, as well as meet allies that don't have a reason to harm them. You can also utilize stealth to get around unaware enemies, distract them with various AI partners you meet on your journey, and use any number of tactics to fight your enemies, depending on important parameters like how well-equipped your foes are, what kind of weapons they have on them, and the like.[9]
ItemsEdit

Items are in The Last of Us. Items are objects that Joel and Ellie can utilize to further their survival, combat enemies, replenish their health, and store things in. The groups that items fall under include ammunition, battery, binding, alcohol, blade, sugar, explosive, and canister. All of these item groups contain items that Joel and Ellie can scavenge for, like revolver ammunition, or craft out of simple items, as in the case of the Molotov Cocktail.
OnlineEdit

It is confirmed The Last of Us will include an online portion. Straley said in GameInformer's March issue, "We're going to have some sort of online component... we definitely know it's going to be awesome."[10] It has been confirmed, through pre-oder bonuses, that The Last of Us will include multiplayer.
Pre-release receptionEdit
The Last of Us has received a highly positive acclaim after it was announced on December 10, 2011 during the Spike TV Video Game Awards. Many reviewers praised the game for its script, visuals, and graphics.
During the E3 2012 showing, The Last of Us has recieved multiple awards from many critics, including the Game Critics Awards which gave the game five awards.

Dead Space 3

At its heart, Dead Space is a game about being alone. About being alone in a dark corridor hurtling through an uncaring void, with mutated creatures that were once human shambling towards you.

Dead Space 3 is exactly like that, except you're not in a corridor. And it's not dark. And the enemies were never human. And you're on a planet. And you're not alone.

How, then, is it Dead Space?

Many people (around half the internet at last count) weighed in with this opinion when the title was unveiled at E3 in June. But the sound and fury of the Electronics Entertainment Expo are a difficult game to play, given the ridiculous levels of fresh content that crops up every year.

Studios have to show that they've grown, but not outgrown their fans; that they've built on their previous successes, but aren't cutting loose intrinsic parts of their franchises in the quest for innovation.

Are two heads better than one?

The innovation in question is a co-operative mode, a first for the horror franchise, which sees vivisection enthusiast and glowing headcase Isaac Clarke teaming up with a gruff, no-nonsense military type in the form of Sgt John Carver.

Isaac, despite starting off as a mute doll for the player to steer through terrifying situations, has blossomed as a character since the series' inception. In struggling with the Necromorphs – horrendous zombie-like things from beyond the stars – he's gone mad. He's not a soldier, he's an engineer.

In the first game, most of his weapons were made of hastily-modified scientific equipment. By all rights, he never should have survived the first two games, and his sanity is having real problems coping with the implications of what he's done.

Carver, conversely, is a space marine, in that he is a marine that operates predominantly in space. He wears big red armour and has a shaved head and a bunch of scars and he uses the f-bomb like most people use simple hesitations or breathing in.

His wife? Dead. His child? Not among the living. He is the very essence, at first glance, of a bullet-spraying cardboard cutout that swings around a big gun and shouts at baddies when they run away. There might well be more to his character than this, but if there is, it's not to be seen in the demo.

What there is to be seen is action, and plenty of it. With the addition of Carver into the mix, the two characters chat to each other in cut-scenes (providing a much richer story than Isaac's quiet progression through the narrative, which is something) and during combat – but listening to your ally tell you where to shoot a monster is less panic-stricken than, say, furiously shooting at it yourself and hoping something will drop off.


Trust me, I'm an engineer

That said, creeping horror being replaced with frantic stress isn't a bad thing. Double the number of guns means additional enemies on screen and concurrent objectives to solve, which may not equal double the amount of horror, but it does open up new elements of gameplay.

In one section, a giant drill spins and rotates around a circular arena in a blatant contravention of established health and safety laws while hungry Necromorph monsters creep out of the woodwork and try to tear the heads off Isaac and Carver with their additional limbs.

One player must deal with the drill (by slowing it down with their suit's Statis field, a series staple that's normally used to stun enemies, and shooting out the engine) while the other fends off the alien horde. It's not a new idea by any means, but it's nice to see.

The fear isn't whether a corpse is going to shamble back to life and start ripping off arms, but whether both parties involved are doing their jobs. Dead Space 3 asks you to put your hands in the life of another, and that's an entirely different – and entirely valid – kind of scare.

The other change from the standard pattern is the addition of human enemies to the mix. Up until now, Isaac's limited his vivisectional tendencies to the grotesque horrors that are Necromorphs; but now – with their human servants, the Unitologists, becoming more desperate – he'll find squads of armoured men with machine guns trying to kill him on a semi-regular basis.

Sawing off their legs and stamping on them is appropriately grim, but entirely optional – unlike your normal foes, they can be shot in the chest and killed quickly thanks to their human physiology.


Back to the old school

During the hands-on, though, it became apparent that there was more to the game than co-op battles on desolate ice planets. During one level set earlier in the game, Isaac explores a derelict ship floating adrift in space and finds – who'd have thought it – Necromorphs, who try to kill him. This is the same old-fashioned terror that the series has dined out on so far: Isaac is under-prepared and struggling to make his way through rusty corridors while too many monsters burst out of the pipework too close to his face.

The same scares are still scary, which is testament to Visceral's ability to effectively program a futuristic haunted house. Approaching a dead body is still wrought with tension, and when it stands up (and they do often stand up) there's still a little thrill of excitement as you struggle to deal with an enemy that is suddenly within killing distance.

The traditional elements, then, are far from gone – players are still lopping the limbs off horrific enemies in a fight to survive, which is rather the point. The story, too, is still Dead Space, but different. It's evolved. There's talk of the ice planet that Isaac and Carver walk across holding the key to the origins of the Necromorphs and, it's hoped, the key to their destruction. For fans of the series, that's an exciting prospect.

None of this is mandatory

It's important to note that having a co-operative mode in a game doesn't mean you have to play it – the game is fully wired to be played alone, first, and then a second time with a friend on a higher difficulty with improved weapons earned on the first playthrough.

Complaining about an optional co-op mode in a horror game, especially when the secondary character is nowhere to be seen on a single-player run, is a bit like complaining Bioware got gay in your Mass Effect and your heterosexual Shepard isn't going to go anywhere near a galaxy where he might be able to kiss a man on the mouth. Silly, basically.